awareness among children. This awareness includes issues of abstinence, behavioural change, and the dangers of sexually-transmitted infections. Fundamentally, parents and guardians are the primary duty bearers in raising children, well suited and best positioned to teach these aspects to children. But an education system that is to be relevant to the needs and issues of the day demands that these issues be equally taught at school. Sexual and reproductive education is part of the solution. The second aspect introduced by the Education Bill is the proposal that schools should not suspend or expel girls who are pregnant. The relevance of this proposal in the Bill is that it is factual acknowledgement and corroboration of what has been stated in this document, that children are in fact engaging in sexual activity among themselves. Protecting a girl child who then falls pregnant from being expelled or suspended becomes a mechanism to curb further challenges visiting the girl child in the sense that the child has already suffered pregnancy due to ill-advised early onset of sexual activity. It is also a measure to implement the nondiscrimination requirements of the Constitution, since the boy child who impregnates is not suspended or expelled from school because he has made a girl pregnant. Through these two Bills, the law is already making some moves to acknowledge what is on the ground, and instead of feigning ignorance or electing apathy, is being proactive to ensure that children are protected in all facets. These two Bills present an opportunity to effect other amendments necessary to ensure greater protection of children insofar as protection of children from sexual exploitation and ensuring access to sexual and reproductive health services are concerned. 13. CONCLUSION The debate on age of consent is not a simplistic one. For it to bear fruit, which is to increase protection to children, the discourse must be evidence-based, founded on the practical realities and experiences of children in our society. Children must no doubt be protected from sexual exploitation and sexual predators. Children must also be treated differently in cases of children having sexual intercourse with other children in non-exploitative circumstances. At the time same, children must be accorded access to sexual and reproductive health services, as well as age-appropriate sex education and counselling. A lot of the issues involved are policy decisions that require a proper reality check, as law does not act and should not act in a vacuum, devoid of the lived realities and experiences of society. Rather, such policy decision must be based on goals and aspirations that the society sets for itself, predicated on the society’s priorities. Whatever those priorities may be, greater protection of children should rank high up. END 33